idle women commission artist-mechanic Dina Rončević to deconstruct and reconstruct a Landrover Defender with local women and girls in St Helens, Lancashire
idle women, the organisation who creates contemporary art with women returns to Lancashire, for the concluding phase of their journey touring the waterways of the North West. The Selina Cooper their residential arts centre, will overwinter on the Hebble and Calder canal in West Yorkshire before returning to Lancashire and idle women in St Helens in spring 2018. In St Helens town centre, idle women are establishing the idle women’s institute (iwi), a new base from where they will produce their winter programme.
To celebrate the final phase of the tour, idle women have invited renowned artist Dina Rončević to join them and the women of St Helens to create a dystopian survival vehicle. Trained as an animator, new media artist and car mechanic, Rončević will work with local women and girls of all ages to deconstruct a Landrover Defender and remake it as an artwork. The new piece continues the artist’s Car Deconstruction series in which she deconstructs vehicles with help from women, often utilising theatre, photography, video, embroidery and text in the development of the work.
Rachel Anderson and Cis O’Boyle, co-caretakers of idle women said, “With the Selina Cooper, we created a temporary force field with the women we met, taking up space together on towpaths, and asserting our right to enjoy the fresh air, the company of nature and the right to creative expression. The time has now come for us to move into a new phase, and to mark this by developing an extraordinary and involving collaboration with Dina Rončević whose artistic practice closely reflects our vision and values.”
During October and November in St Helens, idle women will organise informal social activities and run a weekly Boot Camp for Surviving and Thriving skills with workshops in lock picking, shape-shifting, plant remedies, fortification, design and construction.
Towards the end of the year, idle women will hold a women only disco in St Helens with live musical performances and guest DJ’s. The event honours the end of the idle women (on the water) tour which has hosted artists MUF Architecture/Art, Martina Mullaney, Mojisola Adebayo, Noor Afshan Mirza, Stella Barnes & Nicky Bashall, Sarah Cole, Michelle Wren, Candice Purwin, Raksha Patel, Dina Roncevic, the women’s refuge Humraaz and many other artists, organisations and communities.
At the end of November, idle women host their second Shifting Loyalties residential weekend event in Pendle with invited speakers contemporary artist Jesse Jones; curator Boseda Olawoye; historian, writer and artist Max Dashu; herbalist Dedj Lambert; psychotherapist and social activist Leyla Hussein; artist and writer Sheree Angela Mathews and many others. idle women will also soon begin in bricks and mortar,a new partnership with social arts practitioners Heart of Glass and Anu Productions, and continue their partnership with Humraaz in Blackburn.